Deeply textured clay spheres create an interactive art experience when rolled into sand or onto clay slabs. Beginning with a simple ball of clay, then carve or texture deeply. Once fired, the ball can be used over and over again to create patterning in sand. Or, use the sphere as a beautiful clay patterning tool on soft slabs of clay.

Creating intricate drawings on clay is easy with the help of a little wax. Use colored slips as the base, then cover with wax. A detailed drawing is done with carving tools, removing the wax from the lines. Black slip is brushed onto the wax and settles only into the carved lines.

Combine a hand traced onto clay with a proverb to create a dish imbued with old-fashioned wisdom. Use a simple cut slab and a set of letter stamps add a proverb to a functional ceramic piece. Add an easy-to-make foam stamp and colorful underglazes to make a hand-shaped dish with meaning.

Use animal symbolism to create a personal, stackable totem sculpture. Start with airdry clay to create a base and four animals, add a dowel rod, then stack! Once dry, finish with gloss tempera, acrylics, or inks.

Picasso viewed the ceramic vessels he painted on as a type of canvas that curved. Make a slump or hump molded bowl, then paint colorful imagery on it's interior using underglazes. Finish with clear glaze.

Make a sculptural shrine from an outgrown or second-hand shoe! Primed with modeling paste, covered with ornate embellishments, and then aligned vertically, an everyday shoe can become a dramatic backdrop for relics that represent a student’s favorite thing, place, idea, or event.

Sugar Skulls are a folk art tradition from central and southern Mexico, made as part of the Day of the Dead celebration. Students can create and decorate a long-lasting skull from glow-in-the-dark clay pressed into a common tablespoon used as a mold. Add colorful designs with tempera paint or markers and enjoy Dia de Muertos!

Brilliantly replicate thousands of years of oceanic evolution in just a few hours. Using clay, paint, and pearlescent mixing medium, along with handmade clay stamps, create a beautiful coral sculpture.

Create a textured clay mold to use again and again! Carve a design into a slab and bisque fire it. After coating it with kiln wash, this mold can be used many times to impart unique textures to slumped glass pieces.

Mehndi, tatau, and modern "ink" - the history of art is incomplete without including the practice of creating decoration on human skin. In this lesson plan, students create a jointed clay marionette and use fine-line markers to cover it with expressive designs.

Glazing isn't the only way to create beautiful surfaces! Agateware pottery features swirling marbelized colors and was probably first developed to imitate the qualities of agate, a semiprecious stone with striated patterning. These swirling effects can be created by working with thin slabs of colored clay that has been layered to create patterns. This technique allows for both precise patterns and free, random effects.

The wealthy Byzantine Empire had a huge influence on personal ornamentation. Characterized by extensive iconography, pendants and medallions were widely produced to denote faith, office or rank. For this project, students use air-dry clay and colorful rhinestones to create their own Byzantine-style medallions. Gilded with gold powder and finished with a gloss coating, they can be used as ornaments or placed outdoors as mini stepping stones.

This beginning project introduces early elementary students to basic clay construction skills. Employing both fine and gross motor skills, students assign a unique personality to their pet, then bisque fire and add the definition of spots and color with glazes.

Rattles are the only musical instrument found throughout the world. While their physical forms vary, their uses are very consistent. Many cultures give infants rattles as a toy. In rituals and ceremonies, rattles are used prominently and often believed to possess supernatural powers. Students explore texture and clay construction as they form a rattle inspired by natural shapes: seed pods, shells, gourds, rain-sticks, etc.

A lesson plan from AMACO®. Students select their favorite photo and design a custom picture frame to display it. After the bisque firing, the picture frames will be painted and decorated using the new AMACO® Teacher's Choice and Teacher's Palette low-fire glazes.

Navajo pottery tended towards functional ware and minimalist design and decoration. Pinch, slab and coil construction methods were used to make bowls and bottles, for carrying water and food consumption.
In these projects students will use their knowledge of Navajo symbols to create Navajo inspired designs on a clay bottles.

Polynesia is a large area in the central and southern Pacific Ocean containing more than 1,000 scattered islands. Many of these islands share cultural similarities among the various groups of people who live on them, especially in terms of their mythologies. Stories often include gods or deities that rule nature. In addition to the oral tradition, "god sticks" are made to represent these deities, usually in the form of a human face or figure wrapped in bark cloth or cord.

Beginning in the early 1880s, the “Art Nouveau” style flourished in all forms of art. Beautiful pottery was mass-produced during this era, especially in the form of decorative tiles. Tube lining — a technique in which a design outline was created first and then filled in with color — is the definitive look of Art Nouveau. If kiln-glazed ceramics are not an option for your environment, this project is a way to produce glossy, hand-painted tiles that look like the real thing.

Exercising the imagination helps children develop problem-solving skills. This lesson incorporates students’ artistic skills to sculpt finger puppets out of clay and to use their imaginations to make up a story for their characters. The stories do not have to be written but can be told freely. Create a theatre in the classroom — a table with a cloth over it makes a great stage for Wee Puppets. This project is a wonderful interactive classroom event.

Students of all ages can mimic mosaic artisans throughout history with these easy tile-making and “grouting” techniques. Clay tiles are glued to a firm backboard and grouted with acrylic paint. This project is safe and simple enough for younger students and those with special needs.

The inside of the Earth holds hidden secrets very close to us, so dig a hole to uncover layers of mystery! A hole just 1" deep will show a very small example of soil strata or layers – including rocks, shells, fossils, geodes, water, oil and coal. This art project is based on geology but need not be scientifically accurate as students creatively incorporate texture and line.

One of the many rich crafts produced within the Native American culture is a "fetish," or story necklace, designed to illustrate history and legend with carved creatures representing spirits, animals or ancestors.

Students will hand-build dwellings for forest animals and birds, beginning with flat clay slabs and using slump molds (and even a soda can!) to shape the slabs into three dimensional forms. They will use sprig and press molds to texture and embellish their structures to simulate trees, leaves, knot holes and burrows reminiscent of natural habitats found in woodlands.

Learn leaf anatomy by recreating the patterns and structure of the original. Because the clay is paper-based, it accepts watercolors, which may be reworked and blended on the surface. Watercolors enhance the veining in the leaves, pulling out their natural characteristics.

Make your own tools for stamping image impressions, creating raised designs and adding textures to a variety of artworks. They can be pressed into clay prior to firing, polymer clay before baking and air-dry clay while still moist. Tools can also be used for creating patterns in metal foil or making texture rubbings on paper.

This High-Low Relief Sculpture is a variation on the popular three-dimensional pin sculpture toy that can be molded into familiar shapes as pressure is applied from underneath. These sculptures will be stationary with a few other variations, as students use their imaginations to create rolling landscapes, faces, flowers or other images out of different lengths of colorfully painted craft picks.

Neo-Impressionistic artists of the late 1800s developed a pictorial technique in which they placed specific brushstrokes of pure color directly on their canvas instead of mixing colors first on a palette. In this lesson plan, students will create balls of air dry clay and attach them collage-style to a self-adhesive board to recreate the Divisionism approach to painting.

As young students learn the value and structure of our monetary system, they can make their own coins for trade or to save. This lesson plan allows students to design and “mint” coins bearing their own symbols.

This lesson plan uses intensely colorful, easy-to-use Model Magic air-dry clay in place of yarn to create paintings similar to the art of the Huichol tribe. Students create “strings” of clay and press them together on a rigid surface.
to create symbolic images and designs.

According to a pre-Columbian legend, each person shares a common destiny with an animal that matches their personality and their life experiences called a “Tona”. Students identify with an animal and create a mask that will retain some human features as well. This project linka with personal identification and Mexican Folk Art cultural studies.

Native Americans in the Southwest left messages on stones that still speak to us today. Some of these pictures were actually carvings called
"petroglyphs".This lesson uses air-dry clay to make symbolic drawings on “stone.”

There are 20 Pueblo villages left in the Southwest; there were at one time in history 200. Each of the 20 Pueblos is famous for art and/or crafts, such as pottery. Students will learn about the Pueblo Indian arts and crafts, and emulate the famous pottery of Maria Martinez, who lived in a Pueblo.

Students explore Native American pottery traditions and discover the purpose behind the animal imagery and geometric patterns used to decorate various pottery forms. Students with kiln access will learn how to use underglazes and glazes to transform their bowls into functional ware

From Mayco Colors, this lesson gives students the opportunity to explore the history and function of masks in various cultures and times. Students will be able to learn and master basic hand building and sculpting techniques using either self-hardening clay or clay requiring kiln firing.

Deeply textured clay spheres create an interactive art experience when rolled into sand or onto clay slabs. Beginning with a simple ball of clay, then carve or texture deeply. Once fired, the ball can be used over and over again to create patterning in sand. Or, use the sphere as a beautiful clay patterning tool on soft slabs of clay.

Creating intricate drawings on clay is easy with the help of a little wax. Use colored slips as the base, then cover with wax. A detailed drawing is done with carving tools, removing the wax from the lines. Black slip is brushed onto the wax and settles only into the carved lines.

Make a modern example of traditional Chinese “rice grain” porcelain. A pure white clay combined with a simple slab technique creates the base for a pierced porcelain vessel. With the use of various tools to add pattern and texture, and methods of piercing or puncturing the clay, the result is a beautiful version of an ancient technique.

Combine a hand traced onto clay with a proverb to create a dish imbued with old-fashioned wisdom. Use a simple cut slab and a set of letter stamps add a proverb to a functional ceramic piece. Add an easy-to-make foam stamp and colorful underglazes to make a hand-shaped dish with meaning.

Use animal symbolism to create a personal, stackable totem sculpture. Start with airdry clay to create a base and four animals, add a dowel rod, then stack! Once dry, finish with gloss tempera, acrylics, or inks.

Picasso viewed the ceramic vessels he painted on as a type of canvas that curved. Make a slump or hump molded bowl, then paint colorful imagery on it's interior using underglazes. Finish with clear glaze.

Make a sculptural shrine from an outgrown or second-hand shoe! Primed with modeling paste, covered with ornate embellishments, and then aligned vertically, an everyday shoe can become a dramatic backdrop for relics that represent a student’s favorite thing, place, idea, or event.

Sugar Skulls are a folk art tradition from central and southern Mexico, made as part of the Day of the Dead celebration. Students can create and decorate a long-lasting skull from glow-in-the-dark clay pressed into a common tablespoon used as a mold. Add colorful designs with tempera paint or markers and enjoy Dia de Muertos!

Brilliantly replicate thousands of years of oceanic evolution in just a few hours. Using clay, paint, and pearlescent mixing medium, along with handmade clay stamps, create a beautiful coral sculpture.

Create a textured clay mold to use again and again! Carve a design into a slab and bisque fire it. After coating it with kiln wash, this mold can be used many times to impart unique textures to slumped glass pieces.

By making an animal shaped box out of clay, students honor both the vast diversity of Africa’s animal world, and also create a functional work of art! After choosing a favorite African animal, students will hand build a clay box with lid.

Mehndi, tatau, and modern "ink" - the history of art is incomplete without including the practice of creating decoration on human skin. In this lesson plan, students create a jointed clay marionette and use fine-line markers to cover it with expressive designs.

Glazing isn't the only way to create beautiful surfaces! Agateware pottery features swirling marbelized colors and was probably first developed to imitate the qualities of agate, a semiprecious stone with striated patterning. These swirling effects can be created by working with thin slabs of colored clay that has been layered to create patterns. This technique allows for both precise patterns and free, random effects.

The wealthy Byzantine Empire had a huge influence on personal ornamentation. Characterized by extensive iconography, pendants and medallions were widely produced to denote faith, office or rank. For this project, students use air-dry clay and colorful rhinestones to create their own Byzantine-style medallions. Gilded with gold powder and finished with a gloss coating, they can be used as ornaments or placed outdoors as mini stepping stones.

Rattles are the only musical instrument found throughout the world. While their physical forms vary, their uses are very consistent. Many cultures give infants rattles as a toy. In rituals and ceremonies, rattles are used prominently and often believed to possess supernatural powers. Students explore texture and clay construction as they form a rattle inspired by natural shapes: seed pods, shells, gourds, rain-sticks, etc.

Andy Warhol, a key figure in the Pop Art movement, “mass-produced” silk-screened portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. Transferring an image of themselves onto clay and duplicating it several times, students can experiment with color combinations in portraits, just as Warhol did.

A lesson plan from AMACO®. Students select their favorite photo and design a custom picture frame to display it. After the bisque firing, the picture frames will be painted and decorated using the new AMACO® Teacher's Choice and Teacher's Palette low-fire glazes.

Navajo pottery tended towards functional ware and minimalist design and decoration. Pinch, slab and coil construction methods were used to make bowls and bottles, for carrying water and food consumption.
In these projects students will use their knowledge of Navajo symbols to create Navajo inspired designs on a clay bottles.

Polynesia is a large area in the central and southern Pacific Ocean containing more than 1,000 scattered islands. Many of these islands share cultural similarities among the various groups of people who live on them, especially in terms of their mythologies. Stories often include gods or deities that rule nature. In addition to the oral tradition, "god sticks" are made to represent these deities, usually in the form of a human face or figure wrapped in bark cloth or cord.

Beginning in the early 1880s, the “Art Nouveau” style flourished in all forms of art. Beautiful pottery was mass-produced during this era, especially in the form of decorative tiles. Tube lining — a technique in which a design outline was created first and then filled in with color — is the definitive look of Art Nouveau. If kiln-glazed ceramics are not an option for your environment, this project is a way to produce glossy, hand-painted tiles that look like the real thing.

Exercising the imagination helps children develop problem-solving skills. This lesson incorporates students’ artistic skills to sculpt finger puppets out of clay and to use their imaginations to make up a story for their characters. The stories do not have to be written but can be told freely. Create a theatre in the classroom — a table with a cloth over it makes a great stage for Wee Puppets. This project is a wonderful interactive classroom event.

Students of all ages can mimic mosaic artisans throughout history with these easy tile-making and “grouting” techniques. Clay tiles are glued to a firm backboard and grouted with acrylic paint. This project is safe and simple enough for younger students and those with special needs.

The inside of the Earth holds hidden secrets very close to us, so dig a hole to uncover layers of mystery! A hole just 1" deep will show a very small example of soil strata or layers – including rocks, shells, fossils, geodes, water, oil and coal. This art project is based on geology but need not be scientifically accurate as students creatively incorporate texture and line.

One of the many rich crafts produced within the Native American culture is a "fetish," or story necklace, designed to illustrate history and legend with carved creatures representing spirits, animals or ancestors.

Students will hand-build dwellings for forest animals and birds, beginning with flat clay slabs and using slump molds (and even a soda can!) to shape the slabs into three dimensional forms. They will use sprig and press molds to texture and embellish their structures to simulate trees, leaves, knot holes and burrows reminiscent of natural habitats found in woodlands.

Learn leaf anatomy by recreating the patterns and structure of the original. Because the clay is paper-based, it accepts watercolors, which may be reworked and blended on the surface. Watercolors enhance the veining in the leaves, pulling out their natural characteristics.

Make your own tools for stamping image impressions, creating raised designs and adding textures to a variety of artworks. They can be pressed into clay prior to firing, polymer clay before baking and air-dry clay while still moist. Tools can also be used for creating patterns in metal foil or making texture rubbings on paper.

Create simple tools that can be pressed into clay, used for embossing, texture rubbing or printmaking. Wonder-Cut Linoleum is 1/4" deep — providing plenty of depth for carving a variety of textures and dimensions and making incredibly detailed impressions.

This High-Low Relief Sculpture is a variation on the popular three-dimensional pin sculpture toy that can be molded into familiar shapes as pressure is applied from underneath. These sculptures will be stationary with a few other variations, as students use their imaginations to create rolling landscapes, faces, flowers or other images out of different lengths of colorfully painted craft picks.

Neo-Impressionistic artists of the late 1800s developed a pictorial technique in which they placed specific brushstrokes of pure color directly on their canvas instead of mixing colors first on a palette. In this lesson plan, students will create balls of air dry clay and attach them collage-style to a self-adhesive board to recreate the Divisionism approach to painting.

This lesson plan uses intensely colorful, easy-to-use Model Magic air-dry clay in place of yarn to create paintings similar to the art of the Huichol tribe. Students create “strings” of clay and press them together on a rigid surface.
to create symbolic images and designs.

Classic neon signs are a part of everyday American culture, crossing over lines of economics, geography and heritage. This lesson incorporates the glowing “light painting” impact of neon signage in a clean, neat and easy-to-understand learning experience.

Baskets can be woven out of almost any material, not just reeds and straw. This basket project is whimsical and freeform,using wire and colorful "snakes" that move randomly throughout the piece. Polymer clay bakes right
on the wire, so finished pieces are long-lasting and very
durable.

Native Americans used symbols and motifs with deep cultural significance in making jewelry with clay, turquoise, coral, shell, wood and bone. After Spanish explorers brought silversmithing to Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo artists in the 1800's, Southwest jewelry developed into a distinctive art form.

Native Americans in the Southwest left messages on stones that still speak to us today. Some of these pictures were actually carvings called
"petroglyphs".This lesson uses air-dry clay to make symbolic drawings on “stone.”

This lesson plan begins by focusing on line and texture as students sculpt a flat slab of clay, defining an impressionistic landscape. Once the clay has dried, students will paint the piece using a palette of colors inspired by Van Gogh.

Students explore Native American pottery traditions and discover the purpose behind the animal imagery and geometric patterns used to decorate various pottery forms. Students with kiln access will learn how to use underglazes and glazes to transform their bowls into functional ware

From Mayco Colors, this lesson gives students the opportunity to explore the history and function of masks in various cultures and times. Students will be able to learn and master basic hand building and sculpting techniques using either self-hardening clay or clay requiring kiln firing.

The right tools are essential to a Chinese brush painter. Students will create their own brush holders and ink pots from glazed and fired clay, then learn the basic brush strokes for branches, bamboo leaves.

Deeply textured clay spheres create an interactive art experience when rolled into sand or onto clay slabs. Beginning with a simple ball of clay, then carve or texture deeply. Once fired, the ball can be used over and over again to create patterning in sand. Or, use the sphere as a beautiful clay patterning tool on soft slabs of clay.

Creating intricate drawings on clay is easy with the help of a little wax. Use colored slips as the base, then cover with wax. A detailed drawing is done with carving tools, removing the wax from the lines. Black slip is brushed onto the wax and settles only into the carved lines.

Make a modern example of traditional Chinese “rice grain” porcelain. A pure white clay combined with a simple slab technique creates the base for a pierced porcelain vessel. With the use of various tools to add pattern and texture, and methods of piercing or puncturing the clay, the result is a beautiful version of an ancient technique.

Combine a hand traced onto clay with a proverb to create a dish imbued with old-fashioned wisdom. Use a simple cut slab and a set of letter stamps add a proverb to a functional ceramic piece. Add an easy-to-make foam stamp and colorful underglazes to make a hand-shaped dish with meaning.

Use animal symbolism to create a personal, stackable totem sculpture. Start with airdry clay to create a base and four animals, add a dowel rod, then stack! Once dry, finish with gloss tempera, acrylics, or inks.

Picasso viewed the ceramic vessels he painted on as a type of canvas that curved. Make a slump or hump molded bowl, then paint colorful imagery on it's interior using underglazes. Finish with clear glaze.

Make a sculptural shrine from an outgrown or second-hand shoe! Primed with modeling paste, covered with ornate embellishments, and then aligned vertically, an everyday shoe can become a dramatic backdrop for relics that represent a student’s favorite thing, place, idea, or event.

Brilliantly replicate thousands of years of oceanic evolution in just a few hours. Using clay, paint, and pearlescent mixing medium, along with handmade clay stamps, create a beautiful coral sculpture.

Create a textured clay mold to use again and again! Carve a design into a slab and bisque fire it. After coating it with kiln wash, this mold can be used many times to impart unique textures to slumped glass pieces.

By making an animal shaped box out of clay, students honor both the vast diversity of Africa’s animal world, and also create a functional work of art! After choosing a favorite African animal, students will hand build a clay box with lid.

Mehndi, tatau, and modern "ink" - the history of art is incomplete without including the practice of creating decoration on human skin. In this lesson plan, students create a jointed clay marionette and use fine-line markers to cover it with expressive designs.

Glazing isn't the only way to create beautiful surfaces! Agateware pottery features swirling marbelized colors and was probably first developed to imitate the qualities of agate, a semiprecious stone with striated patterning. These swirling effects can be created by working with thin slabs of colored clay that has been layered to create patterns. This technique allows for both precise patterns and free, random effects.

The wealthy Byzantine Empire had a huge influence on personal ornamentation. Characterized by extensive iconography, pendants and medallions were widely produced to denote faith, office or rank. For this project, students use air-dry clay and colorful rhinestones to create their own Byzantine-style medallions. Gilded with gold powder and finished with a gloss coating, they can be used as ornaments or placed outdoors as mini stepping stones.

Rattles are the only musical instrument found throughout the world. While their physical forms vary, their uses are very consistent. Many cultures give infants rattles as a toy. In rituals and ceremonies, rattles are used prominently and often believed to possess supernatural powers. Students explore texture and clay construction as they form a rattle inspired by natural shapes: seed pods, shells, gourds, rain-sticks, etc.

Andy Warhol, a key figure in the Pop Art movement, “mass-produced” silk-screened portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. Transferring an image of themselves onto clay and duplicating it several times, students can experiment with color combinations in portraits, just as Warhol did.

Beginning in the early 1880s, the “Art Nouveau” style flourished in all forms of art. Beautiful pottery was mass-produced during this era, especially in the form of decorative tiles. Tube lining — a technique in which a design outline was created first and then filled in with color — is the definitive look of Art Nouveau. If kiln-glazed ceramics are not an option for your environment, this project is a way to produce glossy, hand-painted tiles that look like the real thing.

Students of all ages can mimic mosaic artisans throughout history with these easy tile-making and “grouting” techniques. Clay tiles are glued to a firm backboard and grouted with acrylic paint. This project is safe and simple enough for younger students and those with special needs.

Learn leaf anatomy by recreating the patterns and structure of the original. Because the clay is paper-based, it accepts watercolors, which may be reworked and blended on the surface. Watercolors enhance the veining in the leaves, pulling out their natural characteristics.

Make your own tools for stamping image impressions, creating raised designs and adding textures to a variety of artworks. They can be pressed into clay prior to firing, polymer clay before baking and air-dry clay while still moist. Tools can also be used for creating patterns in metal foil or making texture rubbings on paper.

Create simple tools that can be pressed into clay, used for embossing, texture rubbing or printmaking. Wonder-Cut Linoleum is 1/4" deep — providing plenty of depth for carving a variety of textures and dimensions and making incredibly detailed impressions.

Baskets can be woven out of almost any material, not just reeds and straw. This basket project is whimsical and freeform,using wire and colorful "snakes" that move randomly throughout the piece. Polymer clay bakes right
on the wire, so finished pieces are long-lasting and very
durable.

Native Americans used symbols and motifs with deep cultural significance in making jewelry with clay, turquoise, coral, shell, wood and bone. After Spanish explorers brought silversmithing to Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo artists in the 1800's, Southwest jewelry developed into a distinctive art form.

Students investigate dolls and games in history and cultures. All cultures have dolls and are a fascinating reflection of climate, resources, ideas and technology. This particular lesson challenges the student to look into the future and reflect on the past.

The right tools are essential to a Chinese brush painter. Students will create their own brush holders and ink pots from glazed and fired clay, then learn the basic brush strokes for branches, bamboo leaves.

Rattles are the only musical instrument found throughout the world. While their physical forms vary, their uses are very consistent. Many cultures give infants rattles as a toy. In rituals and ceremonies, rattles are used prominently and often believed to possess supernatural powers. Students explore texture and clay construction as they form a rattle inspired by natural shapes: seed pods, shells, gourds, rain-sticks, etc.

Beginning in the early 1880s, the “Art Nouveau” style flourished in all forms of art. Beautiful pottery was mass-produced during this era, especially in the form of decorative tiles. Tube lining — a technique in which a design outline was created first and then filled in with color — is the definitive look of Art Nouveau. If kiln-glazed ceramics are not an option for your environment, this project is a way to produce glossy, hand-painted tiles that look like the real thing.

Students of all ages can mimic mosaic artisans throughout history with these easy tile-making and “grouting” techniques. Clay tiles are glued to a firm backboard and grouted with acrylic paint. This project is safe and simple enough for younger students and those with special needs.

Make your own tools for stamping image impressions, creating raised designs and adding textures to a variety of artworks. They can be pressed into clay prior to firing, polymer clay before baking and air-dry clay while still moist. Tools can also be used for creating patterns in metal foil or making texture rubbings on paper.